Boston Globe – Page 14

Problems with antiracism center cast the Emancipator-Globe split in a new light

Ibram X. Kendi. Photo (cc) 2019 by Montclair Film.

In light of the problems (free link) that have become public at Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, Scott Van Voorhis (sub. req.) asks a pertinent question: What really happened with the split between The Boston Globe and The Emancipator, which was a signature project of the center and its founder, Ibram X. Kendi? The Emancipator continues to publish solely under the auspices of the center, but it didn’t quite make sense earlier this year when the Globe announced that the partnership was ending after two years. Van Voorhis, who produces the newsletter Contrarian Boston, writes:

In announcing the move, the Globe characterized it as the end of a two-year partnership. Hmm. Back in March 2021, when the Globe announced it was teaming up with Kendi and the BU Center for Antiracist Research to launch the digital publication, there was no mention of a two-year deal, or of any time limit to the agreement, for that matter.

Van Voorhis urges the Globe to say more about what was behind the split, but I don’t know if it’s really all that complicated. Based on recent reporting, it’s pretty clear that Kendi was difficult to work with and that the center’s spending was not fully accounted for. That said, The Emancipator continues to do good work and — full disclosure — our Northeastern journalism students have partnered with the site, as in this series on restorative justice.

Also: Overdue kudos to BU’s independent student newspaper, The Daily Free Press, whose Sept. 21 deep dive represents the definitive account (for now) of what went wrong at the center. Reporters Molly Farrar and Lydia Evans began working on the story last December, according to their account. Student journalism rocks.

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No, Arlington is not a ‘news desert’ — and the Globe should have done some checking

Among the more venerable local news startups in the Boston area is YourArlington, which has been publishing in one form or another since 2006. Founded by veteran journalist Bob Sprague, the digital-only site in the past couple of years has gone nonprofit, added a governing board, and hired an editor, Judith Pfeffer, who succeeded Sprague when he retired during the summer. YourArlington offers fairly comprehensive coverage of the town and has paid freelancers. (Disclosure: Some of those paid freelancers have been Northeastern students, and I’ve been asked to speak at Sprague’s retirement party in November.)

So imagine my surprise when I read Boston Globe tech reporter Hiawatha Bray’s story about Inside Arlington, a new project that is mainly produced by artificial intelligence: feed in the transcript of a select board meeting and publish what comes out the other side. Mainly I was surprised that Bray let cofounder Winston Chen get away with this whopper: “The town of Arlington, for practical purposes, is a news desert.” Bray offered no pushback, and there’s no mention of YourArlington. (Gannett merged the weekly Arlington Advocate with the Winchester Star about a year and a half ago and eliminated nearly all town-based coverage in favor of regional stories. There’s also a local Patch.)

Bray is properly skeptical, noting that several experiments in AI-generated stories have come to a bad end and that there’s no substitute for having a reporter on site who can ask follow-up questions. Still, there’s no question that AI news reporting is coming. Nieman Lab recently reported on a hyperlocal news organization in California that’s been giving AI a workout, although that organization — so far — has had the good sense not to publish the results.

But it’s disheartening to see the Globe take at face value the claim that Arlington lacks a local news organization. Scanning through YourArlington right now, I see a story about affordable housing that was posted today, a restaurant review, a story and photos from Town Day and a reception for the new town manager. Such coverage is the lifeblood of community journalism, and it can’t be replicated with AI — and I don’t see any of it at Inside Arlington.

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The Globe announces expanded regional coverage of Greater Boston

The Boston Globe is expanding its coverage of the Boston suburbs, adding the inner belt, the North and South Shores and MetroWest to Rhode Island and New Hampshire, where it has set up bureaus during the past few years.

The staffing is minimal enough that the Globe won’t be able to provide granular reporting in each of the many dozens of cities and towns in Greater Boston — although it is promising substantially more coverage of Cambridge and Somerville. But there are strong independent local news outlets in many suburban communities, and I expect that the Globe will be keeping an eye on them for story ideas. And here’s a thought: Perhaps the Globe could work with those outlets as well. In any event, more is more, and more is better than less. I’ve already signed up for the newsletter.

What follows is an email to the newsroom from editor Nancy Barnes and Anica Butler, the deputy managing editor for local news. Nothing coy about where I got it this time — it came directly from the Globe’s PR operation.

Hi all —

We are pleased to announce that we are launching a regional news team to bolster our coverage of news outside of Boston’s city limits, with the goal of meeting our existing readers where many of them are and attracting new eyes from the many surrounding communities.

Think ambitious enterprise and accountability journalism with statewide appeal, accompanied by creative digital storytelling, bolstered by audience engagement. We’ll also have a newsletter dedicated to our regional stories. Sign up here to get the first edition in your inbox.

Our expanded coverage will reflect the broad diversity in cities and towns outside of Boston, from the Gateway cities to the wealthy western suburbs to the growing Black middle class in Randolph and Stoughton to the new immigrants making their homes in Greater Boston. We will also be making Cambridge and Somerville — Camberville if you will — a beat of its own, reflecting the importance of these cities on Boston’s doorstep.

(And if you’ve already noticed an uptick in stories from outside of Boston this summer, it’s because our team has already gotten a start!)

Here’s the team:

Roy Greene, a deputy metro editor, will bring his great journalistic instincts and creative story ideas to lead this new team. Roy, who has been at the Globe for more than 20 years and has worked on past local news initiatives, lives in East Cambridge.

Assisting Roy in leading the team will be Steve Annear, one of our most creative and enterprising journalists, with an unparalleled ability to put his finger on the pulse of the region and determine which storylines are percolating online. Steve, who lives in Somerville, will edit our Cambridge and Somerville coverage and will lead the team’s digital efforts, including the newsletter.

Here are the reporters:

Spencer Buell, who has a knack for identifying and crafting viral stories (the Cop Slide!), will cover Cambridge and Somerville.

Billy Baker, who most recently showcased his considerable writing chops on the outdoors beat, will cover the North Shore.

John Hilliard, an indefatigable news hound with sources galore, will continue his coverage of the metro west and gateway cities. John always seems to land in the right place when a big story breaks.

Sarah Ryley, a data journalism expert, will cover the South Shore and will also help with metro west.

Roy and Steve will also work with reporters and editors across the newsroom whose beats are unfolding outside the city. So expect plenty of collaboration. And please feel free to send story ideas their way as the team gets going!

Nancy & Anica

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The Globe fires back against its ex-president, claiming his spending was out of control

Boston Globe Media Partners has fired back against its former president Vinay Mehra, who sued the company in June over what he claimed was $12 million in compensation that he is owed in lost commissions, wages and other compensation. The Globe’s answer, filed Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court, goes beyond the usual dry denial of Mehra’s charges to offer a rather vivid account of its own allegations against Mehra. It begins by claiming that the Globe …

… terminated Vinay Mehra’s employment [in June 2020] for cause for repeated instances of poor judgment (or worse) with excessive, unauthorized, and inappropriate spending of the Globe’s money. Unable to resist the temptation to spend corporate money for his own benefit, Mehra repeatedly used his corporate credit card or else spent company money to run up extraordinary expenses that offered no benefit to the Globe. At first, Mehra acknowleged the Globe’s objections to these abuses, and promised they would not recur. But they did recur, and Mehra eventually simply stopped even attempting to justify them.

According to the answer, filed by the Globe’s lawyer, Mark W. Batten of Proskauer Rose, Mehra:

Leased a car for $23,000 without authorization shortly after he was hired in 2017.
Spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on consultants without seeking approval from ownership.
Spent $45,000 on a two-year subscription to Bloomberg Financial, accessible only to him and “with zero discernible benefit to the company.”
Racked up some $400,000 on his corporate credit card without approval, spent Globe funds to attend the 2019 Super Bowl with no benefit to the Globe, and mischaracterized a charitable endeavor related to COVID-19 that primarily benefited a hospital connected to his wife.

The narrative section of the Globe’s answer concludes by alleging that, after repeated offenses, “it became clear that his behavior could not, and would not, stop” and that “the breach had at last become irreparable.”

On Thursday, the Globe’s Larry Edelman reported on the Globe’s answer and quoted Mehra’s lawyer, David W. Sanford, as saying: “The Boston Globe’s accusations are false and a jury that will hear this case eventually will understand them to be false…. The hard work of the litigation begins now with discovery, and discovery will show Vinay is right.”

Before coming to the Globe, Mehra held high-level corporate positions at Politico and, before that, GBH in Boston.

Former Globe editor Matt Storin looks back 50 years after a horrific plane crash

Fifty years ago Monday, a Delta airliner crashed at Logan Airport, killing 88 of the 89 people on board; the only survivor died several months later. The Boston Globe reports on how the families of the victims are getting by those years later. Below is an email I received from former Globe editor Matt Storin on what it was like to cover those tragic events — and how the accident and its aftermath changed the rules of media access.

I was city editor at the time and when we learned of the crash, we of course scrambled everyone available. Some reporters were dispatched to hospitals (to no avail, since there was only one survivor that day), and others were sent to Logan. We even looked into chartering a boat to have [photographer] Bill Brett arrive by crossing the bay. But this wasn’t necessary. Unlike any other airline tragedy I’ve seen covered, there was no attempt by Logan officials to secure the crash site from the press. Our photographers got ON THE RUNWAY even as first responders were working. You wouldn’t believe some of the photos, bodies shown still in their seats (as I recall there were no signs of injuries from fire). Of course we didn’t publish those, but the ones we did publish were shot from short distances. I noted that today’s Globe story did not include a photo of the Aug. 1 morning paper. I wondered if there was a feeling that the photos would be too painful even at this late date.

I thought we did a good job of coverage. John Burke came in from the North Shore and assembled his team of suburban correspondents. They worked diligently through the late afternoon and early evening to get the list of victims with, where possible, bio information. To this day I’ve never forgotten what they accomplished on deadline. But to give you an example of how close our reporters got, I received a call on the city desk that evening from someone at the Pentagon. One of the deceased had been a Navy intelligence officer traveling with classified documents. They somehow knew that one of these documents had been picked up by Frank Mahoney, one of our reporters on the scene. Frank had not mentioned anything to us about this. When I called him at home, he confirmed that he had the document. I believe we got it into the right hands the next morning. I never inquired about what was on it. Under the circumstances, especially since we should have reported the find to the authorities, I decided not to draw any further attention to what happened.

As memory serves from half a century ago, I believe that within weeks Logan Airport advised news media of new guidelines for covering any incidents at the airport. Reporters and photographers were advised they should report to a media center in one of the terminals.

This is probably of little interest today, but today’s story brought back memories…. I’m not sure what happened to those shocking photos but I have a vague recollection of ordering that they be destroyed. In light of the lawsuit in the Kobe Bryant case, that would have been prudent.

The Boston Globe announces it will seek to fill a void by hiring a media reporter

The Boston Globe is hiring a media reporter, a position that has gone vacant for many years. It sounds like a great job, though so broad you have to wonder who could possibly keep up with so much:

Part tech beat, part culture writing, part buzzy local scoops, this job calls for a journalist who’s eager and able to explore the many ways that media shapes modern life, in Boston and beyond. They will cover our region’s advertising and publishing industries and keep an eye on the bold-faced names of local TV, yes. But they’ll also dive into the endless evolution of social media, debates over digital privacy, and the roiling challenges of misinformation in all its forms, from Twitter and Threads to TikTok and new platforms using artificial intelligence.

The Globe has not had a full-time media reporter since Mark Jurkowitz, who left in 2005 and took over the media column at The Boston Phoenix after I left for Northeastern. Mark, who had also been my predecessor at the Phoenix, is now at the Pew Research Center.

This is good news, as we really have a dearth of media reporting in Boston. That dearth has been especially acute since GBH-TV canceled “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney” in the summer of 2021, but there really hasn’t been much in terms of in-depth reporting since the Phoenix closed in 2013. The Globe has taken a couple of stabs at it but did not make a full commitment until now.

Former Globe president Vinay Mehra sues, alleging the Henrys owe him $12 million

Former Boston Globe Media Partners (BGMP) president Vinay Mehra has filed an explosive lawsuit against the company, charging that he was fired in 2020 because Globe owners John and Linda Henry didn’t want to pay him the commissions and other compensation he’d earned for transforming the newspaper into a profitable operation. Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub has all the details as well as a copy of the suit.

Mehra was hired in 2017 from Politico, where he was executive vice president and chief financial officer. Before that, he worked as chief financial officer at GBH in Boston from 2008 to 2015.

According to the lawsuit, BGMP owes Mehra more than $12 million in lost commissions, wages and other compensation. Gaffin writes:

In his suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Mehra charges that despite returning the Globe to profitability, John Henry and his corporate minions decided to cheap out — and then ousted him after threatening and lying about him with an unquenchable “thirst for vengeance” sending him a termination letter alleging “fraud, misappropriation, embezzlement or acts of similar dishonesty.”…

At this point we’re only getting one side of the story, as BGMP has not yet filed a response. But if Mehra’s numbers are accurate, then the lawsuit provides some insight into how the Globe transformed itself into one of the country’s most financially successful large regional newspapers. In 2019, for instance, Mehra claims that the Globe implemented $10 million in cuts “through a combination of targeted layoffs, reduction in vendor costs, reduction in distribution costs, and other measures.”

The result, Mehra claims, was a turnaround from a money-losing operation to one that was enjoying a positive cash flow of “tens of millions of dollars” by the time he left. Indeed, it was at the end of 2018 that John Henry told me, unexpectedly, that the Globe had achieved profitability. “As our digital growth continues the sustainability of a vibrant Boston Globe is coming into view,” he said at that time. “It’s been a long time coming.”

Mehra apparently expects BGMP to flesh out its accusations of fraud and embezzlement as the case moves forward, as he offers some details in what might be regarded as a pre-emptive strike. The lawsuit also includes a statement that I suspect former Globe editor Brian McGrory might disagree with: “He [Mehra] also shifted the focus of the Globe’s reporting to be more strategic, to prioritize the Globe’s strengths, and to drive viewership.”

That sounds a lot like McGrory’s January 2017 memo to the staff in which he talked about repositioning the Globe’s coverage, which I wrote about in “The Return of the Moguls”:

The most important takeaway was that the Globe would no longer attempt to be a “paper of record,” publishing obligatory stories about the minutiae of city and state government, the courts, and the like. Rather, it would seek to become an “organization of interest,” developing enterprise stories out of those traditional areas of coverage that made more of a difference to readers’ lives.

But Mehra didn’t join BGMP until six months after McGrory wrote that memo. No doubt he and McGrory had conversations about how to make the Globe more compelling to its audience. The shift in focus that the lawsuit talks about, though, had already taken place, and in any case fell under the purview of the editor, not the president.

It will be interesting to see how the Globe responds — and, of course, whether this goes to trial or is instead settled out of court.

Two Alden papers, the Boston Herald and The Denver Post, will end commenting

At least two daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group will end reader comments on July 1.

The Boston Herald announced the move earlier today, saying that the change was being made to “dramatically speed up the performance of the website” as well as on its mobile platforms. The Denver Post took the same action last week, although editor Lee Ann Colacioppo cited bad behavior rather than technology, writing that the comment section has become “an uncivil place that drives readers away and opens those trying to engage in thoughtful conversation to hateful, personal attacks.”

Both papers emphasized that readers will still be able to talk back at them through social media platforms.

Wondering if this were a MediaNews-wide action, I tried searching about a half-dozen papers in the 60-daily chain and could find no similar announcements. I found something else interesting as well. The eight larger dailies that comprise the Tribune Publishing chain, which Alden acquired a couple of years ago, are now included as part of MediaNews Group, although they are still listed separately as well. (A ninth, the Daily News of New York, was split off from Tribune and is being run as a separate entity.)

The moves by the Herald and the Post represent just the latest in the long, sad story of user comments. When they debuted about a quarter-century ago, they were hailed as a way of involving the audience — the “former audience,” as Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen put it. The hope was that comments could even advance stories.

It turned out that comments were embraced mainly by the most sociopathic elements. Some publishers (including me for a while) required real names, but that didn’t really help. The only measure that ensures a civil platform is pre-screening — a comment doesn’t appear online until someone has read it and approved it. But that takes resources, and very few news organizations are willing to make the investment.

The best comments section I know of belongs to the New Haven Independent, where pre-screening has been the rule right from the start. Keeping out racist, homophobic hate speech opens up the forum for other voices to be heard. The New York Times engages in pre-screening as well.

So kudos to the Boston Herald and The Denver Post — and I hope other news outlets, including The Boston Globe, will follow suit.

How the Globe and Beacon Press helped Daniel Ellsberg publish the Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg. Photo (cc) 2020 by Christopher Michel.

There are a couple of Boston angles to the Pentagon Papers, the government’s own secret history of the Vietnam War. The documents were leaked to the press in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, who died Friday at the age of 92.

Most people know that the papers were published first by The New York Times and then by The Washington Post. The story of the Post’s race to catch up with the Times is depicted in “The Post,” a 2017 film starring Tom Hanks. What is less well known is that The Boston Globe was the third paper to publish the documents. Former Globe editor Matt Storin wrote about the Globe’s role in a 2008 reminiscence (free link):

It was a significant milestone in the effort of the Globe’s editor, Tom Winship, to lift a formerly modest local paper to national prominence. Before that day in 1971, the Globe had won a single Pulitzer Prize. Since then, it has won 19 more. [And seven more since then.]

It was no accident that the Globe was one of the first three papers, either. “I definitely chose the Globe … because it had been great on the war,” Ellsberg told Storin. The tale Storin relates is pretty wild. Ellsberg, who had access to the documents as an analyst with the RAND Corp., had made a copy of them. The news of the documents’ existence was broken by Globe reporter Tom Oliphant after he interviewed Ellsberg, which in turn led Ellsberg to make still more copies and start disseminating them to the press before the FBI could come calling.

The whole story, including phone-booth document drops and the decision to hide the papers in the trunk of a car parked at the Globe, is well told by Storin.

The other Boston angle is that Beacon Press, a small independent book publisher that is part of the Unitarian Universalist Association, published the Pentagon Publishers after a number of other houses passed on the opportunity because of the legal risks involved. The Beacon Blog quotes Gayatni Patnaik, Beacon’s current director:

Daniel Ellsberg’s incredible fortitude stands as an example for all who believe in fighting for democracy and government accountability and who oppose war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We are incredibly proud to have taken the stand we did in releasing the Pentagon Papers. Today, over 50 years later, we are still guided by the principles that led to that brave decision.

Thanks to Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub for flagging that item. And by the way, Beacon is also the publisher of “What Works in Community News,” co-authored by Ellen Clegg and me, which is scheduled to be released in early 2024.

NHPR case illustrates the limits of actual malice

The harassment endured by Lauren Chooljian, a reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio, is frightening and horrifying. David Enrich of The New York Times reported last week (free link) that Chooljian, her parents and her editor have been subjected to vandalism and threats after she reported on sexual misconduct allegations against Eric Spofford, who founded the state’s largest network of addiction treatment centers.

Spofford denies having anything to do with the vandalism. But there’s an interesting wrinkle to the case that I want to discuss, and that’s Spofford’s libel suit against Chooljian and NHPR. Because of Spofford’s prominence, he has been designated as a public figure, which means that he must show actual malice (as well as falsity and defamation) in order to win his suit. Actual malice, as you probably know, requires that the plaintiff prove the defendant published the offending material despite knowing or strongly suspecting it was false.

NHPR has been ordered by Judge Daniel St. Hilaire to turn over transcripts of interviews, including with anonymous sources. “Legal experts,” Enrich wrote, “called the ruling unusual and alarming, saying such decisions could make it harder for journalists to investigate potential wrongdoing by public figures.” And Enrich quoted one of those experts, Chad Bowman, as saying it was “‘deeply troubling’ for a judge to force journalists to hand over unpublished materials when the plaintiff hadn’t yet made a viable legal claim.”

The last part of that statement is the key: Spofford has not yet presented the sort of evidence that would suggest he could win if allowed to proceed. St. Hilaire seems to be putting the cart before the horse. But if Spofford does have a viable case, then he’s entitled to gather the evidence he needs to pursue it. Remember, he needs to prove actual malice. That means it’s essential that he be allowed to probe the inner workings of Chooljian’s and NHPR’s reporting and editing processes to see whether they knew what they were broadcasting was false or if they harbored any serious doubts about it.

At one time libel had been regarded as what you might call a no-fault tort. That is, if you could show that you had been defamed with falsehoods, then you would win your case, regardless of the news organization’s motivation. In the 1974 case of Gertz v. Robert Welch, however, the Supreme Court ruled that even private individuals would have to prove negligence. With at least two members of the current Supreme Court, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, having suggested they’d like to revisit libel law, it’s worth thinking about whether negligence might be a better standard than actual malice, even for public officials and public figures.

The problem with actual malice has always been that though it makes it extremely difficult for a plaintiff to win a libel suit against the news media, it also gives the plaintiff entree into a news outlet’s private communications. Consider that, in 2005, The Boston Globe lost a libel suit brought by a doctor in the case of Betsy Lehman, a Globe reporter who died after receiving a massive overdose of a chemotherapy drug. In that case, the judge ruled that Dr. Lois Ayash won what turned out to be a $2 million judgment by default after the Globe refused to turn over its confidential sources, as the judge had ordered.

Ayash was entitled to that information, but there was no way the Globe was going to betray its confidential sources. If a negligence standard had been in effect rather than actual malice, then the jury could have determined whether the Globe had acted negligently without probing into its reporting processes.

So, too, with the NHPR case. The problem here, again, is that it’s not clear whether Chooljian reported anything that was false. Truth is almost always considered an absolute defense in a libel case, which is why Judge St. Hilaire seems to be acting prematurely. Nevertheless, the case is a good illustration of why actual malice — defined in the landmark Times v. Sullivan case in 1964 — may have been a mistake, and why negligence may be a more workable standard.